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From: mdb@ESD.3Com.COM (Mark D. Baushke)
Newsgroups: gnu.emacs,comp.emacs
Subject: Re: block manipulation
Message-ID: <MDB.90Feb1140457@kosciusko.ESD.3Com.COM>
Date: 1 Feb 90 22:04:57 GMT
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In-reply-to: ron@woan.austin.ibm.com's message of 1 Feb 90 17:28:23 GMT

On 1 Feb 90 17:28:23 GMT, ron@woan.austin.ibm.com (Ronald S. Woan) said:

ron> Is there any support in GNU EMACS for manipulating blocks of texts
ron> (not regions) spanning multiple lines? Or how about a real simple one,
ron> how do you get rid of a column without having to write a lisp
ron> functions to go down line by line deleting a particular character
ron> position?

Do the rectangle manipulation functions handle what you want 
(see $EMACS/lisp/rect.el for more information)?

	clear-rectangle
	delete-rectangle
	kill-rectangle
	open-rectangle
	yank-rectangle

Given the above rectangle functions and add the functions insert-box
insert-suffix (lisp given below) and you have a fairly full set of
functionality for manipulating rectangular regions (columns) of text.

(defun insert-box (start end text)
  "Insert a text prefix at a column in all the lines in the region.
   Called from a program, takes three arguments, START, END, and TEXT.
   The column is taken from that of START.
   The rough inverse of this function is kill-rectangle."
  (interactive "r\nsText To Insert: ")
  (save-excursion
    (let (cc)
      ;; the point-marker stuff is needed to keep the edits from changing
      ;; where end is
      (goto-char end)
      (setq end (point-marker))
      (goto-char start)
      (setq cc  (current-column))
      (while (< (point) end) ;; modified 2/2/88
	;; I should here check for tab chars
	(insert text)
	(forward-line 1)
	(move-to-column cc))
      (move-marker end nil))))

(defun insert-suffix (start end text)
  "Insert a text prefix at the end in all the lines in the region.
   Called from a program, takes three arguments, START, END, and TEXT.
   The column is taken from that of START."
  (interactive "r\nsText To Insert: ")
  (save-excursion
    (let (cc)
      ;; the point-marker stuff is needed to keep the edits from changing
      ;; where end is
      (goto-char end)
      (setq end (point-marker))
      (goto-char start)
      (end-of-line)	
      (while (< (point) end);; modified 2/2/88
	;; I should here check for tab chars
	(insert text)
	(forward-line 1)
	(end-of-line)	
	)
      (move-marker end nil))))


Enjoy!
-- 
Mark D. Baushke
mdb@ESD.3Com.COM